Facebook promoting "Close friends" to increase activity

Did you see Facebook asking you to star your closest friends to one list called "Close friends" recently? Did you add your close friends and got loads of notifications of all their activity? And then switched off notifications on closest friends? If NO - you are gonna go thru the whole thing soon - so read on

As i explained in few of my previous posts - "Photo/Video sharing kills Facebook & grows Twitter", Facebook is losing activity due to the popularity of micro blogging platforms like Twitter where there is hyper activity. Another reason for this is the old Facebook users are now having considerable amount of friends&share pages and they no longer find the news feed relevant. In order to increase momentum and to make the news feed more relevant Facebook has started pushing "Friends lists" recently.

You will see a window on top asking you to star your closest friends. Facebook suggests close family and friends, giving you the option to select like given below.

Once selected - they go to the friend list "Close friends". Only pain is that by default Facebook starts sending you notifications for every action they do on Facebook (Like,comment,photo upload.etc). Worse if you are on mobile and much worse if you are on notifications via SMS like below.

How to remove Facebook close friends notifications?

1. Go to your Facebook home
2. See on your left side - There's a set of pages you admin, followed by groups and followed by friends' lists. Under the friends list should be "Close friends" category. Click on that
3. On your rights side you will see a button called "Notifications" - tick that off.

Now you will get notified without being a pain as mobile notifications or SMS

Do you think this can make Facebook survive? Did you go thru the same "Close friends" add and remove notifications drama? Feel free to share your experiences...

How to hard reset Samsung Galaxy Tab & Vendor hypocicy

Few weeks back,my Samsung Galaxy Tab started showing this error message "app.calendar is not responding".etc. It keeps coming,you cant even go to settings. I searched for the error in the net, there was not much help. So thought of going to the official Samsung repair centre in Bambalapitiya. I had already gone there to replace my battery so i knew the place.

They said there is a software jam and quoted Rs.4000 to do the following.

1. With the device off, press and hold Volume Up and Power buttons.

2. Release the Power button when you see the Samsung logo, but continue to hold Volume Up until the recovery screen appears.

3. Use the Volume buttons to navigate the menu and select wipe data / factory reset. Press Home to choose the selection

4. Press volume up to continue - Tab will continue its resetting process. You just need to wait for about 3-5 minutes.

End of the process, I had my tab just as when it was purchased. The process took maximum 5 minutes and few pressing of button, for which the Samsung dealer in Sri Lanka charges Rs.4000. To make things uglier its not Samsung but a local agent of Samsung that is running the repair centre who charges unreasonable prices like this knowing the users are ignorant and have no other place to go.

My advice to all Samsung users in Sri Lanka - double check if you are getting some repair done, if you are not on warranty period - pls do a Google search about the fault or show it to someone you know - If you know about gadgets please contact me. Lets not let hardware vendors to spoil innocent customers.  

Photo/Video sharing kills Facebook & grows Twitter

In one of my posts in last October titled  "Facebook "Share" button is going to be the next big thing" I explained how Facebook strategically gave more prominence to Photo&video shares through the timeline view. In a recent post titled "Is engagement higher for Facebook photos?" i proved with stats how this has made sharing of a photo or a video get higher engagement than a text update.

Outcome of this strategy was heavy sharing of images which resulted in the emergence of photo sharing Facebook pages such as "Trust me,Im an Engineer", "Ads of the world", "Kajuwaththa eksath"(Local) , "Loweth ne" (Local) and the culture of edited photo sharing in the form of memes.

This has also made the data consumption higher for Facebook usage and the requirement of certain minimum speeds to access Facebook (Some android phones will need long Facebook app load times). But the most important and a vital result of highlighting photos is the negligence to text based updates.  As given in the post "Is engagement higher for Facebook photos?", Facebook users are three times less likely to respond to a text only update now.

We have passed the era of text status updates of good and bad moments of life and getting dozens of comments from Friends and Family. Now a text status update in Facebook receives very low attention. This outcome is killing Facebook by driving users to microblogging platforms like Twitter where even a text based update can make a lot of impact. Do you think this can kill Facebook? Will Facebook understand the consequences and try to rectify it? Please feel free to comment your opinion below...

Why Yoshitha Rajapakshe on FB SLmemes page is so significant?

Whole Sri Lankan online community was talking about one thing yesterday. President's son and his girl friend commenting on a meme in Sri Lankan Memes Facebook page about them.

The meme was about an astrologist predicting the president that his about to become a grandfather, MR saying his kids dont even have girlfriends & then showing pics of Yoshitha,his girlfriend, some baby. Its a superb meme anyways. (If anyone wants to see the meme,pls comment below i will send the link)

Within few minutes President's sons girlfriend has commented phrasing the meme (in the meme language), followed by Presidnets son himself commenting saying "HILARIOUS". This was a first time that we noticed a highlevel VIP personally commenting on a public forum. Both of them commented in a very light way, showing the PR qualities of the President.

This isn't something that we have seen in Sri Lanka so far. But is a common phenomenon in other matured internet markets like India or even US where celebrities & VIPs comment, tweet like normal people in the communities. I assume one of the reasons why India has a huge followership in Twitter than Sri Lanka is because their celebrities are actively on Twitter. I know certain Sri Lankan girls who have joined twitter,just to follow their bollywood celebrities in India and some of them have even got replies from the likes of Shah Rukh Khan on Twitter (Do you see the pas coming out? #IfYouKnowWhatIMeanMeme)

This kind of celebrity/VIP participation on social networks can lead to increase in community members for Sri Lanka - my point is that after hearing the news

• More people will want to join Facebook and 
• More people will want to be active on this pages to interact with their celebrities
• Will encourage more celebrities/VIPs to come on board social media and interact with their fans

for e.g.Increase in Facebook and specially an increase in Twitter users since celebrities in Twitter are easily reached than in Facebook.  Such an increase would mean better internet atmosphere with much more local content around the web. Will Yoshitha commenting on Facebook meme be the turning point of Sri Lankan celebrities/VIPs in social communities?

Next up : "Cold war between popular Sri Lankan Facebook 'share' pages"

Is engagement higher for Facebook photos?

I was so curious about this after my only text status update today morning only drew 9-10 likes. Whereas one of the photos i uploaded got 200+ likes few days back. I gave some serious research in to what gets more activity on Facebook.

Here's data i extracted from three different studies done by three digital marketing agencies.

Type/Study	Web Liquid	Momentus Media	Jon Loomer Digital
Photos	0.37%	0.21%	0.76%
Text only	0.21%	0.09%	0.29%
Videos	0.31%	0.11%	0.30%
Link	0.15%	0.07%	0.35%

As clearly shown, photos gets more attention. But

what can be the possible reasons for this?

Facebook timeline
FB timeline gives more prominence to photos because of its boxy layout.

Facebook share button/link
As i predicted in October 2011, after making the "SHARE" link prominent Facebook images became very popular. Viral image formats like memes became massive trends. Viral groups like "Kajuwaththa Eksath" became a hit among FB users.




Increasing internet usage(speeds&data)
Specially in countries like Sri Lanka,those who surfed Facebook through mobiles are now getting in to high speed connections. Only text status updates were popular during those days but now everyone can afford data for images and its faster.

How will it effect me?

Individual users - Think before you update your status,If you have resources & time,get in to a photo update. 

Brands - More emphasis on photos & other interesting content is needed. Brands should focus on giving a graphical picture of all they want to communicate on Facebook.

What do you think? Do you think Facebook will try to do something to save text only status update because micro blogging services like Twitter will build upon this advantage? 

Does Google remember your search history?

Yes. I know its scary.

Only exception is if you are not logged in to Gmail or any other service. Came across the topic while going through SL memes,there was this one "If someone remember everything we search in Google - we are screwed". And i enlightened them finally giving a link to see what they have searched.

When you are logged in to Gmail (Part of Google) or any other Google service (For eg.Google docs,Google drive, youtube or even Google reader) all your Google searches are recorded. 

When you sign up to a Google service you give in your consent for all your searches to be remembered.

But this cant do major harm - As i know it helps advertisers target their Google ads better - showing you ads you will be interested in. Like one of the Google adwords promotion said "best ads can be a search result).

Another plus point is that you are able to go back to your searches. For e.g. one day while travelling i listened to this awesome song and googled the lyrics through my Android phone, But totally forgot about it afterwards. About 2 days later when i was infront of the PC i wanted to download the song - And Google search history came to my rescue.

How to view my Google web history - Log in to Gmail. Click on my account button below Google+ profile. Click on products. Click on Google web history - DAMN!

What do you think? Is it good or bad? Feel free to comment below with your opinion.

Rockmelt Browser Facebook message SPAM

Previously i warned Facebookers of the Rihanna & Kim Kardarshian links - This time it's about a very subtle spamming by the Facebook dedicated browser called "Rockmelt".

As i heard Rockmelt is not a bad browser. It's a modern, Facebook dedicated browser which is getting popular. It's unbelievable to see such a good product using bad promotional methods like below.

Once you use Rockmelt through Facebook, they take authentication and sends a message to your Facebook friends like the one below.

And if you don't accept they send you a reminder in two days like below.

I personally do not use Rockmelt but got a lot of messaged like the above. Feel free to share whether Rockmelt is as good as they promote it...